The subject of this record, after his arriving in Elmwood, spent about three years in earning money at various employments, and, in 1844, purchased a quarter section of land (part of his present homestead) and went to farming for himself. He manifested great energy, industry, and skill in the management of financial matters, and had accumulated considerable property previous to 1849. In the spring of that year, at the breaking out of the first gold excitement, he broke up farming and went to California, making the journey across the plains, by Turner & Allen Pioneer Line, from Independence, Missouri, which carried passengers through for two hundred dollars per head. After reaching Independence, to join the wagon train, he was seized with cholera and while writhing in its agonies at the point of death, the company and train went off and left him. He recovered, however, and took the next train on the same line, which left Independence on the 28th day of June, 1849. He had a tolerably comfortable trip and arrived in the “Weaver Diggings” on the 10th of October of that year, after a journey of three and a half months, which at that time was considered a quick trip. His various experiences in the golf regions we shall not attempt here to describe, as the principal incidents of California life, at that early period, are sufficiently familiar to the reading public. He remained in California only one year. On the 1st of September, 1850, he set sail on the barque Belgrade, at San Francisco, for his return trip, via Panama, and on the 22d, encountering the line storm, was badly wrecked, sails and masts all being swept away. They were then nine hundred miles from shore and were twenty-eight days in making the post of Acapulco. Here they bought horses and traveled through the country to the city of Mexico, and thence to Vera Cruz and New Orleans, where they took a steamer up the river, arriving home on the 20th of December, 1850, having been over four months from San Francisco.

It is supposed by some that Mr. Hurff made a fortune in California but the facts are these: He took away with him a thousand dollars in gold and retuned with about two hundred dollars more than he took away. He has found more gold in the rich prairie soil of Illinois than in the mines of California; and one of the results of his experience there has been to make him content with the slower but surer accumulation which has rewarded his industry and enterprise nearer home. He has made his own money by his own exertions, except about $4,000 realized out of his father’s estate. He returned from California resolved to realize out of his farming and land operations what he had failed to attain in the mines. In the fall after his return he went to buying and improving wild lands. He bought five quarter sections in Knox county, and has divided them into farms and planted hedges around each, and divided each farm by hedges into forty-acre fields, and has buildings and orchards on them all, and all fitted up, suitable for renting. He improved a quarter section each year and at the end of five years had all the above lands in a good state of cultivation.

In 1860 he bought at a good bargain the farm adjoining the quarter section on which he first settled, with the elegant house on it, which he now occupies, then unfinished but which he has since improved and furnished and built the finest barn in this part of the country, and other buildings and made other improvements of the grounds, and in the way of fences, walks and shrubbery, so that the home of Mr. Hurff is today one of the most beautiful and sightly of any in Peoria county. With the elevated situation of rolling farm land, nicely hedged and a fine grove in the distance, with its stream of living water and its orchards of choice fruits of every variety, and elegant buildings, modeled after the best architectural designs, overlooking the town of Elmwood, about a half mile distant towards the west—one may travel far to find a place superior, or even equal to it, for value and desirableness as a country home.

Up to the time of purchasing this place, Mr. Hurff had lived a bachelor but on the 9th of April 1860, he married a cultivated and amiable lady, Miss Angeline P. Whiteside, who was born in Independence, Washington county, Texas, and, when a child, removed to Houston and was carefully educated by a private instructor, and in 1849 came to Elmwood, Peoria county, Illinois, where she resided when she was married to Mr. Hurff. By this marriage, they have had five children, two sons and three daughters, four of whom are living. Mr. Hurff is an earnest, energetic and self-made man, and has labored diligently and planned wisely to attain the success he has achieved in life. He has from the first been hard-working and economical and by his own talents and efforts has made his way in the world. He is an independent thinker, forming his opinions for himself and “pinning his faith to nobody’s sleeve.” He had preferred the quiet duties of home to the arena of public life and has avoided politics, considering his time of more value than the emoluments of any office he might secure. (page 61)